Standardization of SharePoint 2010 deployments are important to me, especially within the DoD. It’s my belief that standardization could minimize environmental issues while giving all of us engineers a baseline understanding of how farms have been deployed in common environments, reducing spin up to final resolution times. The use of PowerShell allows us to do this without having to rely on the user to click or not click something which lets face it, sometimes we can’t rely on ourselves to click the right thing every time, so we can’t expect it from anyone else. So let’s look at how we can install SharePoint 2010 using a script and deploy the farm using PowerShell:

I recommend following a previous blog post before implementing the steps below to insure you have prepared your operating system for SharePoint 2010:

In my last post, I discussed signing up for a free SharePoint 2010 site. It was a good idea to get people to know more about SharePoint by just giving away a site to play with. Well, I wasn’t ready to do it apparently, I was going to have to create the site, create credentials, give them access, e-mail it to people, and maybe the list goes on from there as well.

Well NOT anymore! =o) I integrated a SP2010 Web Application and Site Collection with Windows Live, so if you have a Windows Live Account, or even if you don’t, its free, and you can have one in about 2 minutes: Signup for Windows Live Account Now!

If you have one or now that you do have one…just go to WWW2SHAREPOINTADVICEdotNET, look under Announcements, follow the directions (2 more minutes) and you now have a SharePoint 2010 site, blog, wiki, or whatever you want that SharePoint 2010 has to offer…it’s a lot. =o) So in, 4 minutes, you have a SharePoint 2010 site you are in full control of, and you don’t even have to talk to me! You can still say Hi though! =o/ HaHa…

There is a lot of interest in SharePoint 2010, it would be great to have a site to just play around with right? I believe I was just having this discussion during lunch yesterday of how sometimes FREE just isn’t good enough, and I totally agree. When there is something you need to be able to do, sometimes you get what you pay for, and if you paid nothing, well there you go. On that note, I am offering a free SharePoint 2010 site to anyone who would like to use it for whatever free is good enough for. If you’re interested in having one, just click here, fill out the form, and I will set it up for you.

I had a client issue today that I’d never run across before. Their SharePoint Performance Counters were missing from PerfMon, and thier workflows weren’t running. The WorkFlow issue oddly enough makes sense although you wouldn’t think so from first glance. The OWSTimer service for SharePoint uses these performance counters, if they’re missing, you may not notice it from trying to run PerMon, but you’ll definitely notice when your workflows no longer execute. You’ll also start to see errors such as this one in the event view and ULS logs:

w3wp.exe (0x1674) 0x07CC Windows SharePoint Services Workflow Infrastructure 72fq Unexpected Start Workflow: System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. ---> System.InvalidOperationException: The requested Performance Counter is not a custom counter, it has to be initialized as ReadOnly. at System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter.Initialize() at System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter..ctor(String categoryName, String counterName, String instanceName, Boolean readOnly) at System.Workflow.Runtime.PerformanceCounterManager.CreateCounters(String name) at System.Workflow.Runtime.Hosting.DefaultWorkflowSchedulerService.OnStarted() at System.Workflow.Runtime.Hosting.WorkflowRuntimeService.HandleStarted(Object source, WorkflowRuntimeEventArgs e) at System.EventHandler`1.Invoke(Object sender, TEventArgs e)

There has been several times now that I’ve had the need to install SharePoint 2010 where there was no available internet connection. The internet is everywhere right?? Well, not really. There are testing environments, classified networks, and probably more that I can’t think of right now that are unable toconnect. Installing SharePoint 2010 becomes pretty impossible if you don’t already have the necessary files handy. Even if you do, you’ve got to install them one by one, who does that anymore right? I put together an .ISO file with all the necessary prerequisite files and scripts to install SharePoint without an internet connection, download it here and follow the simple preparation instructions below.